What started as a makeshift pet shelter in Cedar Rapids grew into a sprawling operation housing nearly 1,000 animals.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — As floodwaters began to rise this spring, forcing thousands from their homes, Sgt. Kent Choate oversaw one of the larger evacuation efforts, providing shelter to hundreds of animals whose owners had been displaced.

“We expected we’d house our animals and maybe 100 more lost animals,” said Sergeant Choate, who is in charge of the animal control unit of the city’s Police Department, “but then one of the city’s pumps broke, and we knew it was going to grow exponentially. We just didn’t know how big.”

Almost every spring, water from the nearby Cedar River flooded the approach to the building that housed the animal shelter. But this spring was different. Heavy rains left surrounding farmland saturated, and by early June the engorged Cedar River, normally a lazy stretch of water that feeds the Mississippi, had washed over its banks, flooding an estimated 4,200 homes here and displacing thousands.

As the shelter flooded, animal control officers were forced to relocate the animal shelter to higher ground at nearby Kirkwood Community College, where Anne Duffy, a professor of veterinary technology, had previously offered the college’s Animal Health Technology building as a shelter during flooding.

“We both agreed after the May flooding that we should put a policy together,” Ms. Duffy said, referring to Sergeant Choate. “We were going to get right on that, but then the flood came up before the policy did.”

As the situation deteriorated, flood victims, many staying in hotels, shelters or cars, began dropping off pets at the college. Others, who had been forced to flee without their pets, began calling in with pleas for their animals to be rescued. Within days, what had started as a makeshift shelter had grown into a sprawling operation housing nearly 1,000 animals — dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, lizards, even a red-eared slider turtle — in three buildings.

With the influx of animals came an infusion of aid. Several national chain stores donated supplies. Veterinary technicians came from as far away as California to volunteer, and legions of veterinarians, groomers and even flood victims soon arrived at the shelter wanting to help.

On Saturday, 40-pound bags of dog food were stacked pell-mell throughout the complex, pet toys were crammed into boxes, and desks, shredded paper and cat litter had been pushed into corners of classrooms. Ms. Duffy estimated that volunteers had logged roughly 25,000 hours at the shelter.

One of the lessons driven home after Hurricane Katrina — in which an estimated 200,000 animals were displaced — was that some residents risked, and lost, their lives rather than leave a beloved pet behind.

“The biggest thing learned by everyone from Katrina is the importance of animals in people’s lives,” said Diane Webber, disaster preparedness director for the Humane Society of the United States. “They can’t be excluded from disaster planning and response. People aren’t going to function and they’re not going to evacuate if their animals aren’t provided for.”

Ms. Webber, who estimated the Humane Society sheltered 15,000 animals across Louisiana and Mississippi during the 2005 hurricane, said animal evacuation first arose as an issue after Hurricane Andrew’s march across southern Florida and Louisiana in 1992.

The dedication of Americans to their pets is well documented, including a Zogby International poll in 2006 in which 49 percent of adults reported they would refuse to evacuate if they could not take their pets.

Joanna Hughes, 45, said her husband, Philip, had lived with their six dogs in a garage for several days after they evacuated their home in nearby Palo.

“My husband would’ve stayed there right with the dogs until they hauled him away in shackles,” said Ms. Hughes, who visited her dogs at the Kirkwood shelter Saturday. “He cares more about the pets than he ever did about the house.”

Ramona Potts and her mother, Dorothy Jensen, refused to leave their four dogs, including a miniature poodle named Lilly Mae, when floodwaters forced them to evacuate their homes about 10 blocks from the Cedar River.

“We were living in a Buick,” said Ms. Potts, 51, who visited the dogs at the shelter Saturday. “But my dogs weren’t doing too well in the car. Lilly Mae kept jumping out the window.”

Still, many animals were either abandoned or forgotten as the floodwaters approached.

One of the dogs at the shelter, a white German shepherd, was rescued by searchers who were answering a call to rescue another animal.

“There was no rescue request on this dog,” Ms. Duffy said. “She was swimming back and forth in five feet of water when they pulled her out of the house. She was just swimming from the back of the house to the front of the house.”

Ms. Duffy added that that although the German shepherd showed signs of having recently given birth, rescuers did not find her litter. “We speculate that she lost her puppies in the flood,” Ms. Duffy said.

As the waters have receded, the shelter’s population has dropped to around 620. The city of Cedar Rapids has imposed a 14-day hold on all pet adoptions, although unclaimed pets like the German shepherd may eventually be shipped to out-of-state shelters for placement.

“We’re trying to give people a chance to find their lost pets before we put strays up for adoption,” Ms. Duffy said. “But there’s really no way the people of Cedar Rapids could adopt all these animals.”

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